


Within the Province of Dream

by Nokomis



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Dream Sharing, Dreams vs. Reality, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-24
Updated: 2014-01-24
Packaged: 2018-01-09 22:06:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,805
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1151341
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nokomis/pseuds/Nokomis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lydia is starting to remember the dreams, remembers strange disjointed things: flashes of familiar locations, broken things and the ever-present darkness, and most prominently, Stiles at the center of all of it, falling deeper and deeper into the abyss.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Within the Province of Dream

**Author's Note:**

> This is an idea I've been toying with since the 3A finale, and has stayed mercifullly unjossed through Galvanize, so spoilers to there. Huge thanks to Lielabell for the beta/encouragement. <3

The hospital walls are stark white, and Lydia’s sneakers squeak on the linoleum as she moves down the hall slowly, feeling as though she’s trying to run through water. Every movement takes longer than it should, her limbs heavy and clumsy, with her heartbeat pounding in her ears, and she’s dreading what she’s going to find when she finally reaches her destination.

She glances behind her, and the corridor stretches, stretches, stretches until it just looks like a giant warehouse, all cold fluorescent light and endless white walls.

In the distance there’s a blur of brown, and just as her eyes focus on it…

She wakes up.

Lydia’s lying in her bed, staring up at her ceiling. Her room is dark, and her chest is heaving, like she was just running for her life. 

She's looking around, wondering if her mom heard her, when she realizes that her throat isn’t raspy, that she never actually made a sound.  The dream is fading, leaving behind only the impression of bright white light and the familiar scent of antiseptic.

Lydia rolls over onto her side, fumbling for her phone to see the time.  Just past three, which means that she shouldn’t have even _been_ in REM sleep.

She tries to remember the dream, and all she can think of is waking up in that hospital room after she’d been attacked.

She doesn’t like thinking about the attack, because it inevitably leads her back to thinking about how Peter is alive, and how her dreams have betrayed her before. 

She pulls her comforter closer to her chin, and closes her eyes, trying to will herself back to sleep.

Sleep doesn’t come.

*  
It happens again and again.

She wakes up silent and afraid, teeth clenched together hard enough that her jaw aches, clearly holding in the screams that come natural to her.

She doesn’t know why she stopped screaming. Her throat appreciates it, but something about it unsettles Lydia. She no longer feels like herself when she wakes, but like the world has shifted during the night and left her someone new, though she doesn’t know _who_ that could be.

She holds it together during the day. Puts on her brave face at school, and doesn’t say anything to Allison, who looks even more pale and drawn than Lydia feels as the ritual moves days, then weeks into the past.

One night, she wakes up, the words still on her lips. “Stiles, don't...”

She’s starting to remember the dreams, remembers strange disjointed things: flashes of familiar locations, broken things and the ever-present darkness, and most prominently, Stiles at the center of all of it, falling deeper and deeper into the abyss.

*

The arrow's so close to her face that she could feel the air move, and Isaac's frozen, shock-still, staring at Allison. Lydia knows the look on her face.

Lydia's felt that before, has _seen_ that combination of dread-fear-horror scrawled across her features in the mirror when she realized no one else could see what she'd seen. That she'd been talking to a ghost. 

She takes a deep breath and forgives Allison, pushes aside the fear that’s still hammering in her heart, and holds Allison tight, whispering that it was alright. She remembers seeing Allison standing in the hallway at school, looking completely wrecked, and the pieces fall seamlessly into like gears in a clock, and still Lydia doesn’t know what to say.

No one had known what to say to her, either. 

*

“Why didn't I take a picture of it?” Stiles asks suddenly.

“Of what?” Lydia asks, setting down the book on ancient dream interpretations she was reading, hoping for a clue. Hoping for a way to free her friends from their nightmares.

“The trap,” Stiles says. “I had my phone. I could have taken a picture of the instructions, shown them to you. You know more about engineering than I do, and you were perfectly capable of reading.”

Lydia stretches out her legs, digging her toes into Stiles' comforter as she tries to justify her actions beyond _logic doesn't apply to dreams._

“Logic doesn't apply to dreams?” she says out loud, startled.

“Is that a question or an answer?” Stiles' brow is furrowed, like he's close to making the same realization that's just dawned on her.

“Both,” Lydia says, picking up her book again. She knows what it _should_ say on the cover, but now that she's looking closer, the font blurs into itself and becomes a jumbled mess that only appears to be words to the most casual observer. “I wouldn’t have been able to read it, either.”

“But I'm the one dreaming,” Stiles says quietly. “You aren't supposed to be part of this.”

The _you're supposed to be safe_ is unspoken, but Lydia can see it on his face, clear as day. 

“One night,” Lydia says slowly, “I woke up in your bed. The door was open, and I begged you not to close it. I could feel something beyond it, something evil, but you wouldn't listen to me, no matter how I screamed.”

Stiles is pale as death, his gaunt cheekbones casting shadows that make him look positively skeletal. “It was a dream,” he says quietly. “I had woken from a dream within a dream, and you were there, which meant I was still dreaming.”

“I shook you awake,” Lydia remembers. “We've been sharing dreams, Stiles. The trap...”

“It's like what's been happening to Allison,” Stiles says. He shakes his head. “God. How did we think that was real?”

“Worse things have happened to us,” Lydia says, “and the darkness... it didn't want us to look too closely. It was threatening me, because....”

“Because you're my anchor.” There's too much in Stiles' eyes. Lydia looks away.

*

“Does Isaac...” Lydia begins, then steels herself to continue the question, “ever see what you do? When you hallucinate.”

Allison continues re-stringing her bow. “Not that I know of.”

“No shared hallucinations at all, then?” Lydia presses, because... Well, Scott's issue is more physical than mental, and she's not willing to ask Deaton if he's been dreaming about a teenage boy. But Allison has been more reticent than usual on the topic of Isaac Lahey, and Lydia wonders...

The shared dreams with Stiles feel intimate, like something she shouldn't speak of even with Stiles, and if Allison and Isaac are experiencing something similar... it might be a clue or symptom or _something_ that could help them figure this out before it's too late.

Allison shakes her head. “He's been there, though,” she says after a moment.

“Like when he saved me.” Lydia's life hadn't flashed in front of her eyes, but sometimes when she closes her eyes, she sees the cold expression on Allison's face as she let the arrow fly. It's something she'll never tell her best friend.

“And sometimes...” Allison tucks her hair behind her ears, which have turned bright red. “They're of him.”

Lydia raises an eyebrow. “Do tell.”

“I dreamed once we were... you know,” Allison says, “And then suddenly Kate was there.”

“Did you ever think about him before?” Lydia has to know, just for her own peace of mind. She can still sometimes feel the light touch of Peter's hand brushing her cheek, and it sends shudders down her spine. She couldn't stand letting her best friend fall under the influence of something evil, too.

Allison nods quickly, like she's trying to get the confession out of the way.

Lydia smiles and something teasing comes out automatically, hiding the relief. 

She remembers the confusion she felt when Deaton pushed her towards Stiles instead of Allison, like he knew somehow which anchors would work best.

“I think that Deaton didn't tell us everything,” she says finally.

Allison gives her a _no shit_ look. “And I think we need to find out what it means.”

*

They're in the forest.

Lydia steps carefully; the sun is bright overhead, but the memory of standing on a trap like a landmine ready to go off is too vivid for her to let her guard down. Stiles walks briskly just ahead of her, looking around nervously, like he's expecting something terrible to appear at any second.

Eventually, they get there. Lydia can feel the thrum of power coming from the remains of the nemeton before Stiles pushes aside a sapling to reveal the clearing.

“Why are we here?” he asks, and Lydia isn't sure whether he's asking the tree or her.

When she steps forward, though, she notices something. “Look.”

There's fresh blood on the roots, a bright arcing pattern of droplets that Lydia has read enough forensic articles to know means arterial spray.

“Someone died here,” Stiles says slowly.

“It's a _human sacrifice tree_ ,” Lydia snaps.

Stiles glances over his shoulder, glaring at her. “Recently. Someone's died here recently.”

“Before or after we did the ritual?” Lydia asks, because the thought of someone's lifeblood powering the newly awakened tree... someone's life powering the nightmares she knows are much worse than just the parts she sees...

“Jennifer, or Julia, or whatever the hell her name was,” Stiles says suddenly. “Her body disappeared.”

Lydia stares at the blood, the way it's just as vibrant as the moment it left a still-warm body. “So it's going to get stronger.”

“The final stage is death,” Stiles says quietly.

“I'm not going to let it take you,” Lydia says, grabbing his hand and holding it tight. Anchoring him to her.

There's a jolt, and her eyes pop open. The darkness of the room seems absolute after the brightness of the forest, and she realizes that they'd been dreaming again. She turns over, pulling the blankets closer to try to stave off the shiver that's running through her body, when she bumps into another person.

She reaches out with her hand, and there's a masculine arm beside her, soft skin over lean muscle. Someone is breathing softly, the sound rasping against the silence that fills the room, and Lydia leaves her hand wrapped around his arm, so she doesn't drift away during the night.

*

“When they're my dreams,” she explains over lunch, waiting for Scott and Allison and Isaac to arrive, “I wake screaming.,”

“I have to scream to wake myself up,” Stiles admits, taking a bite of his apple.

“Therein lies the difference,” Lydia says lightly.

“Have you...” Stiles looks down at his apple, like he's memorizing the patterns his teeth have made against the soft flesh of the fruit. “Have you had any more dreams? With me?”

“Besides the one with the nemeton?” Lydia doesn't know how to bring up that odd moment that happened after, when dream and reality seemed to slosh together as she found comfort by sharing his bed. She only knows that she woke in her own bed, but her car had still been warm when she left for school.

Lydia's intimately familiar with the aftereffects of sleepwalking, and it's never gotten any less disturbing, knowing that her body is doing things her mind is unaware of.

“Yeah,” Stiles says. “Yeah, that's just the one I was talking about.”

They're both quiet when Scott settles down beside Stiles, Kira hovering nervously at the end of the table until Lydia takes pity on the girl and pats the bench beside her.

Stiles raises his eyebrow at her, and Lydia shrugs, watching Scott's face light up as he smiles at Kira.

At least one of them is happy.

*

Stiles is alarmingly pale, with shadows like bruises under his eyes. It's so unnervingly like the image Lydia saw when she wiped the fog from the bathroom mirror that morning that she loops her arm through Stiles' and leads him to the boys' locker room.

“Um,” Stiles says, but it's not the same sort of “um” she would have gotten from him just a few short weeks ago. He doesn't look like he's imagining her naked; he looks like he's terrified of what she might say to him.

“You look terrible,” she says, before his thoughts can lead him down a dark path.

“Thanks, Lydia, just what I wanted to hear from you this morning,” Stiles says, voice deceptively light.

“Just sit still,” she says, and pulls a tube of concealer out of her bag. The shade's not exactly right, but they're both pale enough that she doesn't think anyone will notice.

It's better than the shadows haunting his eyes, anyway.

Stiles doesn't say anything as she applies the concealer and tries her best to erase the nightmares. His eyes flutter shut, his eyelashes brushing against her thumb like eskimo kisses. She drifts her fingers across the planes of his cheekbones as she finishes, and he still doesn't say a word. It's uncharacteristic enough that she starts to ask him things, trying to fill the strange void the silence leaves them with.

“Is it getting worse?”

She doesn't have to clarify what. They're beyond that now.

“Sort of,” Stiles admits quietly, slowly opening his eyes. “I... I'm not even sure if this is happening. Right now, I mean. I've never actually dreamed about you putting makeup on me before, but it turns out it's very soothing.”

He looks as though he could fall asleep right there, tilting his head into her hand as she watches him.

She's almost tempted to let him.

“It's happening,” Lydia says, because she thinks it is, and she's not going to let sleepwalking ruin her life again. No, she's going to live every fucking moment like it's real, whether it is or not. “So don't go blabbing to everyone that I gave you a makeover, okay? Neither of our reputations could withstand that.”

Stiles smiles, soft and sleepy, still resting his head against her hand, and says, “Got it. No bragging about a Lydia Martin makeover.”

Lydia lets him go more quickly than she'd like, and turns on her heel to go to fourth period.

When she looks back over her shoulder, Stiles is sprawled out on the bench, eyes drifting shut. She lets him stay, sending Scott a quick text to have him check on Stiles in a few.

She should stay to guard his dreams, but she's afraid that she might actually make them worse.

*

They're at the school.

The basement is dark with flickering lights, just like every horror movie Lydia's ever seen, and Stiles rests his fingertips lightly in the small of her back. They set her nerves ablaze, and she appreciates the sensation. Appreciates knowing that someone is close, someone is _with_ her here. He's staying a half-step behind her, letting her take the first steps into the darkness.

She tries her best to _hear_ what's out there, but... there's nothing. Just the clank and groan of the distant furnace, and a soft scuttling sound from further in the darkness that Lydia hopes is just a mouse.

“The door's ahead,” Stiles whispers, and Lydia stares into the darkness, trying to see it. Nothing; just a square that gives the impression of being even darker than its surroundings.

Lydia stops. “Are you sure?”

“I have to,” Stiles says. He takes a step, standing directly beside her, his arm wrapped around her waist. “Deaton says it's the only way.”

“There's always another way,” Lydia says, because it feels wrong to let Stiles go into the darkness alone. It feels like something she should do with him, like she should be there to _help_ , instead of just standing alone in the darkness hoping he makes it out alive.

“This is the only path I see,” Stiles says as he steps away from her.

Without the warmth of his hand on her back, Lydia shivers, suddenly feeling how cold the basement truly is.

She squeezes her eyes shut, and when she opens them...

She's in her bedroom.

It feels strangely unused and empty, like she's waking in a hotel room instead of her own home, and before she's even given it real thought she's pushing back her covers, shoving her feet into flats and racing out the door.

The Sheriff's car is parked in the driveway next to the Jeep, so Lydia parks down the road, and walks quickly and quietly to the back door. She knows the key is kept under a rock beside the porch, and she doesn't question how she has that knowledge. She just quietly opens the door and slips up to Stiles' bedroom.

As soon as she opens the door, she knows she has to get him awake. The room is icy cold, and Stiles is laying flat on his back. The curtains are open, letting the moonlight in, and Lydia realizes with alarm that while it's cold enough that she can see her breath in puffs, Stiles is only letting out the tiniest amount of air, faint as steam off a mug of coffee.

His eyes are open, unblinking, and Lydia feels a wild panic grip her. She has to wake him. She _has_ to, or else the darkness is going to claim him.

She shakes his shoulder, hisses, “Stiles!” as loudly as she dares. Everything she's read about dreams and dying is racing through her mind, and she knows that tonight, one of the cardinal rules has to be broken. Never wake a dreamer, the myths say, but in the same breath, they tell you you can die in a dream.

She's not going to let Stiles die, so she has to wake him.

He doesn't respond, not when she yells, shakes him, or even hits him. He doesn't wake when his dad comes racing into the room, stopping, confused, when he sees Lydia, panicked, pleading with Stiles to just wake up already.

“What can I do?” the Sheriff asks her, and Lydia doesn't know. She doesn't know the answer.

“Hold your ears,” she says, and tries the last thing she can think of – her scream.

It rattles the windowpanes and the Sheriff looks at her like he's suddenly re-evaluating a lot of things, but Stiles remains deathly still on the bed, his breath growing fainter and fainter.

“There has to be _something_ ,” Lydia says, more to herself than to the Sheriff. “There's always an answer, if you think about something clearly enough.” But there's no formula, no theorem that affects the darkness.

“How did you know?” the Sheriff asks her, and Lydia suddenly realizes that he's feeling more helpless than she is, watching his only son, his only _family_ , lay there dying while he'd been oblivious until he'd heard her frustrated screams. “That he was in danger?”

“I'm his anchor,” she says, and knows that somehow, that's her answer. That's the piece of the puzzle she hasn't quite found a place for. “I was in his dream, and he went to the door to force it closed, and... I woke up and he didn't.”

Stiles does something then, sucks in a sharp breath, and then....

Nothing.

“Stiles!” the Sheriff yells, panicked, as he shakes his son's shoulder.

Lydia walks slowly to the bed, knowing she has to figure this out. This is her last chance to save him, to do what she was meant to do.

“He's not breathing,” the Sheriff says in a broken, horrible voice that Lydia never hopes to hear again.

Lydia remembers the last time Stiles couldn't breath, when he thought his father would die, when his voice sounded just like the Sheriff's just had. When she'd lead him to the locker room and...

“Move,” she says, hurrying to Stiles' bedside. The Sheriff is reluctant to move, but when she shoves at him, he takes a wary step back.

“Wake up,” she says again, softer, and presses her lips to Stiles'.

She reaches within herself as she does, to that dark strange power inside her. It's stronger now, like she can sense death lingering around Stiles, and she uses that to pull the power up and shoves it at the connection she can see now, the one anchoring her to Stiles.

It happens so fast she doesn't even feel herself fall, but she's there, in the dream again.

It's darker now, she can't see anything, but she can hear Stiles hyperventilating somewhere in the distance. It's a dream, she reminds herself, and pulls her phone out of her pocket to use as a flashlight.

The light cuts through the blackness, because dreams can be bent to the dreamer's will, and she finally sees Stiles, sitting in the half-closed doorway, back against the door jam and tears streaming down his face as he struggles to catch his breath.

“I'm here,” she yells, doing her best to stave off the darkness as she runs towards Stiles. He's further away than she initially thought, and she yells again and again, “Stiles, I'm here, you're safe,” as she makes her way to him.

She grabs his arm, pulls him out of the doorway when she gets there, not trusting herself to look into the darkness to see what's there. It's the oldest human trick, pretending that if you can't see it, the monster can't exist, but Lydia has more important things on her mind.

“Stiles,” she says, “Look at me. You're not alone here, look at me.”

Stiles' eyes are unseeing as they turn to her, and she grasps his face in both her hands. “You're going to be safe,” she says, “I promise you,” and she kisses him again, tries to give him as much of her warmth and light as she can.

It works. Stiles' breath catches and then he takes in a deep, sucking breath, and he's breathing, he's alive.

“I have to...” He turns towards the doorway, to the hole letting the darkness into his soul. “Help me.”

This is what an anchor is meant to do, Lydia realizes, as she holds Stiles steady as he builds up a barrier over the door, pulling the door itself shut and then piling anything he can find in front of it.

She's meant to be here, holding him steady.

Keeping him from getting lost.

“Thank you,” Stiles says as they wake up, and she's staring into his eyes, mouth hovering a bare inch above his.

“You're welcome,” she says as she pulls back, grasping his hand in hers and helping him sit up.

The Sheriff is suddenly there, arms wrapped tight around his son, who still looks dazed from his brush with death.

“I tried to scream you awake first,” she says, voice wavering.

“I'm okay with your methods,” Stiles says. His voice is just as shaky as hers.

“Don't make this a habit,” Lydia tells him, trying her best to regain her queenly tone of command, but it comes out soft and sad.

“Deal,” Stiles says. His eyes are still haunted, but he's not questioning reality.

She's not questioning it either; she remembers how she got here.

It's a step in the right direction.


End file.
